Tina Brown Tells Vogue How She Deals with Snark

A lengthy profile of Newsweek/Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tina Brown hit newsstands this week in the latest issue of Vogue, adding to the longcanonof profiles on her since she took control of Newsweek. The 5,000-word profile caught New York magazine's Chris Rovzar a little off guard: the former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor actually has a family life! Brown recalls her time spent with daughter Izzy.

I always dropped Izzy at school, but there was something extremely lovely about going to pick her up in the middle of the afternoon—this wonderful stolen mother-daughter time—and we’d go and have an ice cream or tea together, chat away, and come home and she would do her homework and I would read a book and we would have dinner.

Another notable quote from the profile is Brown describing how she deals with the sizable amount of snark and commentary written about her on a daily basis. According to her, she just turns it off:

Brown brushes off all the negative chatter, saying, among other things, that she does not read Web sites like Gawker, where the carping has been rather meanspirited. “I don’t have Google Alert,” she says, “because it’s a waste of space in my brain. Nothing ever will appear unless it’s got a snark to it. I’m not being a snob about it; I just don’t have the time.” When I push a little harder, it’s clear she has at least heard the criticism. “There is this notion that this is some sort of vanity project,” she says. “There is nothing quixotic about this idea. I can assure you that Barry Diller doesn’t go in for vanity projects. Nor do I! So I don’t have any anxieties about the future business success of this company. I mean, I think it’s a challenge. But so was everything else I have taken on. So was Vanity Fair; so was Tatler; so was The New Yorker. And so was the Daily Beast, and we have nearly seven million unique visitors now. So, either you believe in yourself and your ability to turn it around and make it work, or you shouldn’t be in the game.”

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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